Böcker av Pia Tafdrup

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. The Taste of Steel and The Smell of Snow are the first two collections in her new series of books focussing on the human senses. While taste and smell dominate, the poems are equally about the way of the world and the losses that people sustain during the course of their lives.

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets. She has received the Nordic Literature Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - and the Swedish Academy's Nordic Prize. This new translation of her work combines two recent collections, The Migrant Bird's Compass and Salamander Sun, which comprise the third and fourth parts of a quartet written over ten years: the first two parts are The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses (published in English by Bloodaxe in 2010 as Tarkovsky's Horses and other poems). The Migrant Bird's Compass is a book of poems about the dimensions of travel, either to specific countries or as an inner journey. The route from birth to death is also portrayed. Travel demands commitment and curiosity. The only predictable thing about it is the unpredictable. Travel implies vulnerability, but also much that has happened at home while one was away. The poems are about the experience of 'resting in myself / despite the fire in the centre of the earth'. Salamander Sun presents 60 poems, one for each year, from 1952, when Pia Tafdrup was born, to 2011; from the first chaotic sensations, through the gradual discovery of the world and its diversity, and of language, its possibilities and challenges; from growing up on a farm, puberty, study, politics, love, to becoming a poet, having two sons, getting older and having old parents; to leaving one's mark and understanding one's place in the passage of time. The poems cast light backwards, but also seek a focus in the future. Together with The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses the two books form a quartet that centres on the theme of journeying and passage, its individual parts creating a field of tension. Each part portrays an element: water, earth, air and fire, each represented by a creature, and each part has a key figure: the beloved person, the father, the mother and the "I" that recalls its life. Original title: Salamandersol.

Pia Tafdrup is one of Denmark's leading poets, the winner of the Nordic Prize - Scandinavia's most prestigious literary award - for her collection Queen's Gate, published by Bloodaxe in 2001. This new translation of her work combines two more recent collections, The Whales in Paris and Tarkovsky's Horses, the first and second parts of a quartet.

Pia Tafdrup creates her own myth through poems centred on water in all its forms in Queen's Gate, a confluence of themes and threads running through her previous work. It is a many-voiced and multi-layered book drawing on the same fertile sources as her manifesto, Walking Over Water, but brought to an inspirational highwater mark of achievement.